Day 13th - Nazca Lines

Jim Stark blogging here again. Today (Monday) was a fun day for the kids. We got up rather early and had breakfast at 6:00, then boarded the bus by 6:30 for a 4.5 hour ride south down the panamerican highway to the town of Nazca, were the Nazca lines are located. The bus was mostly quiet until around 10:00 when we made a bathroom break in a little town called Palpa, which was next to the little bit bigger town of Sacramento. Both of these towns took all of 3 minutes to drive through. But at least there were restrooms and a small bodega (store) across the street where the kids had fun buying cookies and crackers and alfajores (a really delicious pastry made with a type of pie crust but denser, molded and baked in small rounds, and then made into a cookie by spreading dulce de leche on one and putting another one on top like an oreo cookie). Most of the kids bought at least one.

Our bus driver is very careful and safe, so it has been good to have him as the driver for the rest of our trip here. Not that the other drivers have been bad, mind you, but we are now on a big bus and it takes a skilled driver to negotiate the roads in Peru.

We arrived at the Nasca lines airport at around 1:00, and started the paperwork necessary to board the plane. It turns out we needed our passports (go figure), which Dagny had left back at the hotel. With a little bit of persuasion, we were allowed to still take the tour. We had to split into groups of 8 or 10 or 12, because the planes are not that big and we also had to calculate our weights so they could make sure we didn't overload the planes. Good to see they practice safe aviation here. The planes were very new and well maintained, so none of us had any qualms about getting on and flying over the Nasca lines. And, only 3 of the group lost their cookies (so to speak). We'll let you guess at who they might be.

The Nasca lines were pretty cool! We saw only a small portion of the figures (monkey, parrot, condor, spider, spaceman, alcatraz, tree, and my personal favorite - the hummingbird). There are literally over a thousand lines, and there are many theories as to why they are there. The group had fun inventing reasons for the Nascas putting them there - the favorite seemed to be aliens, but I'm thinking there was a more practical reason - Kieri's theory was that during the dry seasons they were always so bored that there would be an annual festival and art contest to see who could come up with the best geoglyph.; I say it was a penal colony. In any case, the lines were fun to see from the air.

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The lines cover large areas of the desert and form pictures or outlines of animals, geometric figures, or organic items. These lines date back to over 2100 years ago. There is nothing to explain for sure what these lines were created for, but there any many theories. These range from explaining the characters as an astronomical calendar to marking or connecting ritualistic locations to creating anthropologically significant figures that could be used for both religious worship or cultural development.

Though the locals have known about the lines since they were created. But the first major archaeological research was completed in 1926 by Toribio Mejia Xesspe. Later in 1939, an American researcher Paul Kosok flew over the lines in 1941. He announced to the world his discovery. 1946 he was joined by German mathematician Maria Reiche. Maria tried to prove a connection between the lines and the constellations. She is still considered the matron of the Nazca lines even though many of her theories have been disproven.

Located on what is called the San Jose Plains between the towns of Nasca and Palpa 4 hour drive south of Lima.

They were made by the etching of furrows between 20 centimeters and 1 meter deep or by removing stones from the desert's surface and then placing them along edges of the furrows to form the design. Miraculously in both cases the designs were not erased over time because the wind prevented the furrows from being filled with sand.

We were done and back on the bus at 4:00, so we went to the Nasca aqueducts to eat our box lunches. The aqueducts are another mystery dating from the Nasca era, but seem to have been built to bring water from the source in the mountains to the crops on the desert floor. They are underground ducts, and have air holes every so often that lead down into them.

We just got back on the bus, and now I am typing this. We are on our way back to the hotel in Canete (about 4 hours away), and so Kieri is playing a game with the kids that is kind of like 20 questions, but with their seat partner. She is making them rotate seats around, so they get to know each other better. Kieri is so wonderful with the kids - she would make a great seminary teacher.

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